I'm considering modifying the Abzan mechanic from my custom set, and so far have come up with the following alternative:
Invoke [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a number of black 1/1 Spirit creature tokens with “This creature can’t block” equal to this card’s toughness. Invoke only as a sorcery.)
Obviously this is similar to Scavenge, which is an ability that WotC seems to have had difficulty balancing in the past. So the main kind of feedback I'm looking for at this point comes down to managing the power level (although I"m open to other comments and suggestions as well). I included "Can't block" on the tokens so that they can't gum up the board too much (especially in limited). I'm also considering the option of giving the tokens "When this attacks, sacrifice it at the end of combat," effectively giving the tokens decayed without using that keyword. Ultimately, the goal is to find a balance where the mechanic is still impactful without requiring an obscenely high mana cost for activation.
The power marker on scavenge created a lot of unnecessary complexity for how it was used in RTR block. Being tied to toughness specifically rather than just a set number will only relevant if (a) you have an ability that grants the ability to other cards like Varolz, the Scar-Striped did for scavenge, or (b) you have a card that has its base toughness defined by an ability like Dodgy Jalopy. If you aren't planning to utilize this, you'd have an easier time balancing it as Invoke X COST, where it makes X tokens.
Any ability that pumps large numbers of token creatures will slow the game. Even if they cannot block, opponents will naturally want to hold back blockers against the wide board attacks. Most cards in Innistrad only made 1-2 decayed zombies, so the board didn't fill as quickly and the build to critical attack mass usually took quite a few turns. Here, fewer large creatures in graveyards could immediately present that large threat.
if you keep it a static amount of tokens, you can use some design space to give them abilities or have an anthem like intangible virtue, but only adjust the power, etc..
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pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
The power marker on scavenge created a lot of unnecessary complexity for how it was used in RTR block.
I didn't play any RTR limtied, so I didn't have any insight on the balance issues there. Thanks for the info. In the case of Invoke, I had the ability tied to toughness since that's a theme for Abzan, and I'm aware that if I were to keep it that way that I would have be very careful about the toughness to cost activation ratio. While it would be a little sad to lose the connection to toughness, it does seem like it would be worth it in order to lower activation costs.
if you keep it a static amount of tokens, you can use some design space to give them abilities or have an anthem like intangible virtue, but only adjust the power, etc..
I'm not sure what you mean. The invoke cards already exile themselves from the grave to create a token.
As to your other suggestion, yeah I definitely plan on having token payoff motifs in those colors. I'll have to be careful about how much support there is though, because that would still be a part of the balancing issue for the activation cost of the mechanic, as well as how many tokens I can produce. Anthems seem a little dangerous here.
I meant exile the creature and create one 1/1 token.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
I meant exile the creature and create one 1/1 token.
Ok, that helps make sense of your other suggestion too. My concern is that while it would be easier to balance this way, it doesn't allow for enough variability on cards with the mechanic. Having different costs and values keeps things interesting.
I meant exile the creature and create one 1/1 token.
Ok, that helps make sense of your other suggestion too. My concern is that while it would be easier to balance this way, it doesn't allow for enough variability on cards with the mechanic. Having different costs and values keeps things interesting.
you could always have some higher rarity cards create more than one token, but I’m not sure how you can balance that.
if you want to get a bit more creative, you can create a mythic that exiles from to create tokens and can pay a cost to bring back to hand.
Alternatively, maybe you could create some exile matters cards similar to crackling drake as a payoff to exiling creatures.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
There will be some exile matters cards in the set, and possibly in Abzan colors. That will depend on the Mardu mechanic I end up with, which I've been debating between exile matters for them, or token matters. Either way, both clans will have synergy with each other.
After mulling it over some more, I realized I was being too conservative with the activation cost to token quality ratio. Going with the precedent of cards like Dauntless Cathar, I've changed the tokens to 1/1 flyers. I still want to keep the toughness focus to preserve the Abzan feel, and to differentiate Invoke from cards like Dauntless Cathar, so I've reworked the mechanic to the following:
Invoke [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a number of black and white 1/1 Spirit creature tokens with flying equal to half this card’s toughness, rounded up. Invoke only as a sorcery.)
Currently, I'm aiming to keep the activation cost roughly equal to even toughness creatures, and 1 mana higher than odd toughness creatures.
Sidenote: Please don't reply to your own comments, especially on your own thread, when you can just edit you last comment. While not your intention, it is a problem where people will just incessantly post on their own threads to bump them up the forum when people aren't paying attention to them.
So, to what I was talking about earlier, tying the number of tokens to toughness is almost never different than just assigning a value because toughness doesn't change in the graveyard (with rare exceptions to specific card templates).
In short, a X/4 with Invoke [COST] tied to its half its toughness rounded down is no different than Invoke 2 [COST] except it has a lot of extra text that doesn't matter.
Secondly, the cost of your tokens isn't a linear scale, especially if they have flying - Creating 3 1/1 flyers is significantly stronger than making 2, etc. and it isn't costing you card advantage since this is a graveyard activation. You will rarely want a number higher than 2 off one of these activations and often just 1 will be more balanced even if the creature is a 1/4 or something.
Sidenote: Please don't reply to your own comments, especially on your own thread, when you can just edit you last comment. While not your intention, it is a problem where people will just incessantly post on their own threads to bump them up the forum when people aren't paying attention to them.
As you said, bumping the thread wasn't my attention. I didn't edit my last comment because that was a reply to Pokerkingdave only. In hindsight,I probably should have just edited my first post. My bad.
So, to what I was talking about earlier, tying the number of tokens to toughness is almost never different than just assigning a value because toughness doesn't change in the graveyard (with rare exceptions to specific card templates).
True, tying the token value to toughness doesn't do much mechanically; it's mostly a thematic choice, so it may not be worth the extra text as you say.
Secondly, the cost of your tokens isn't a linear scale, especially if they have flying - Creating 3 1/1 flyers is significantly stronger than making 2, etc. and it isn't costing you card advantage since this is a graveyard activation. You will rarely want a number higher than 2 off one of these activations and often just 1 will be more balanced even if the creature is a 1/4 or something.
At this point it may be useful to compare Invoke to Afterlife, which didn't require an activation cost for the token creation, but typically had the cost stapled up front on the initial mana value. It seems like I could at least get away with the initial creature being aggressively costed if the token generation costs mana. But either way, I agree that there should be, at most, only a couple cards that could produce 3 tokens.
Invoke [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a number of black 1/1 Spirit creature tokens with “This creature can’t block” equal to this card’s toughness. Invoke only as a sorcery.)
Obviously this is similar to Scavenge, which is an ability that WotC seems to have had difficulty balancing in the past. So the main kind of feedback I'm looking for at this point comes down to managing the power level (although I"m open to other comments and suggestions as well). I included "Can't block" on the tokens so that they can't gum up the board too much (especially in limited). I'm also considering the option of giving the tokens "When this attacks, sacrifice it at the end of combat," effectively giving the tokens decayed without using that keyword. Ultimately, the goal is to find a balance where the mechanic is still impactful without requiring an obscenely high mana cost for activation.
Any ability that pumps large numbers of token creatures will slow the game. Even if they cannot block, opponents will naturally want to hold back blockers against the wide board attacks. Most cards in Innistrad only made 1-2 decayed zombies, so the board didn't fill as quickly and the build to critical attack mass usually took quite a few turns. Here, fewer large creatures in graveyards could immediately present that large threat.
if you keep it a static amount of tokens, you can use some design space to give them abilities or have an anthem like intangible virtue, but only adjust the power, etc..
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
I didn't play any RTR limtied, so I didn't have any insight on the balance issues there. Thanks for the info. In the case of Invoke, I had the ability tied to toughness since that's a theme for Abzan, and I'm aware that if I were to keep it that way that I would have be very careful about the toughness to cost activation ratio. While it would be a little sad to lose the connection to toughness, it does seem like it would be worth it in order to lower activation costs.
Which version of the tokens are you referring to with this example: the one's that just can't block, or the ones with "decayed?"
I'm not sure what you mean. The invoke cards already exile themselves from the grave to create a token.
As to your other suggestion, yeah I definitely plan on having token payoff motifs in those colors. I'll have to be careful about how much support there is though, because that would still be a part of the balancing issue for the activation cost of the mechanic, as well as how many tokens I can produce. Anthems seem a little dangerous here.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
Ok, that helps make sense of your other suggestion too. My concern is that while it would be easier to balance this way, it doesn't allow for enough variability on cards with the mechanic. Having different costs and values keeps things interesting.
you could always have some higher rarity cards create more than one token, but I’m not sure how you can balance that.
if you want to get a bit more creative, you can create a mythic that exiles from to create tokens and can pay a cost to bring back to hand.
Alternatively, maybe you could create some exile matters cards similar to crackling drake as a payoff to exiling creatures.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
There will be some exile matters cards in the set, and possibly in Abzan colors. That will depend on the Mardu mechanic I end up with, which I've been debating between exile matters for them, or token matters. Either way, both clans will have synergy with each other.
Invoke [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a number of black and white 1/1 Spirit creature tokens with flying equal to half this card’s toughness, rounded up. Invoke only as a sorcery.)
Currently, I'm aiming to keep the activation cost roughly equal to even toughness creatures, and 1 mana higher than odd toughness creatures.
So, to what I was talking about earlier, tying the number of tokens to toughness is almost never different than just assigning a value because toughness doesn't change in the graveyard (with rare exceptions to specific card templates).
In short, a X/4 with Invoke [COST] tied to its half its toughness rounded down is no different than Invoke 2 [COST] except it has a lot of extra text that doesn't matter.
Secondly, the cost of your tokens isn't a linear scale, especially if they have flying - Creating 3 1/1 flyers is significantly stronger than making 2, etc. and it isn't costing you card advantage since this is a graveyard activation. You will rarely want a number higher than 2 off one of these activations and often just 1 will be more balanced even if the creature is a 1/4 or something.
As you said, bumping the thread wasn't my attention. I didn't edit my last comment because that was a reply to Pokerkingdave only. In hindsight,I probably should have just edited my first post. My bad.
True, tying the token value to toughness doesn't do much mechanically; it's mostly a thematic choice, so it may not be worth the extra text as you say.
At this point it may be useful to compare Invoke to Afterlife, which didn't require an activation cost for the token creation, but typically had the cost stapled up front on the initial mana value. It seems like I could at least get away with the initial creature being aggressively costed if the token generation costs mana. But either way, I agree that there should be, at most, only a couple cards that could produce 3 tokens.